MY UNPLEASANT EXPERIENCE WITH THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM, "INCORPORATED"

The following article has been written in order to warn potential students, especially from Middle East countries and China, who want to obtain a degree from the University of Nottingham or another university in the UK that shares the same mentality. In this warning article, I feel it necessary to include the details of my experience, because, although it seems a specific situation, this artical leads to very consistent conclusions when read carefully. I feel myself responsible of warning these students because they naturally would not want to be humiliated and insulted by the UK authorities while paying to their universities thousands of pounds, in the hope of shaping their future and receiving a good job.  

First of all, let us see the offer letter sent by the University of Nottingham to me, which is prepared by their admissions officers by simply copying the applicant name and pasting on it. However, this method do not always work good as you will see a bit later.

Actually, this “copy-paste” offer letter, which is claimed by Caryl Thompson, the Head of the Admissions Office, to be the standard University of Nottingham unconditional offer letter for postgraduate study, is specially designed by the University of Nottingham for rich overseas students especially from Middle East and China, who have a potential to make the University of Nottingham rich. Such students pay to the University of Nottingham thousands of pounds (much  much more than the British and other EU students) every year because they think that, after obtaining a degree from this “companiversity”, they will be able to find a good job when they return to their home countries. And having this fact in mind, "the Companiversity of Nottingham" finds it as a good idea to design such a copy-paste offer letter, and sends copies of it to these students by only editing the name part of it, because, the field of overseas tuition fee does not need to be edited, and there is also an associated footnote at the bottom of the page to guarantee the money, which warns the student: “If you do not have the money, do not make us lose time!”.

However, most probably just because they have never faced any problem before, they do not hesitate to send it also to the students to whom they offer PhD position with overseas scholarship.

Since I decided to pursue an academic career in computer science, I left my job and accepted (completely mistakenly) the PhD offer of Dr. Sanja Petrovic from the Department of Computer Science and Information Technology at "the Companiversity of Nottingham".

"The studentship offers approximately 12000 UK pounds per year as a living allowance for 3 years. This is a standard PhD grant for UK students. In addition to the living allowance, the studentship will pay your tuition fees, which are approximately 9200 UK pounds per year. The difference between the overseas and EU PhD fees will be paid by the School"

To be able to apply for a student visa, for a number of times, I asked them to send the necessary documents including confirmation for the scholarship and stipend mentioned above. However, interestingly, they only sent me the copy-paste offer letter above. Let's now analyze this offer letter:

However, congratulations to them for not forgetting to write my name on the offer letter. As I said, this is a “copy-paste” letter. They only copy your name and paste it on the required field. The other parts remain the same. 

Since I was offered a studentship with an overseas scholarship, I asked to the officers at postgraduate admissions to send a new, seriously edited offer letter, with the associated financial fields corrected, with the fear of facing problems during my application procedure to obtain a student visa at the British Embassy, Ankara. However, they rejected doing this and told me that this would simply suffice for such an application. It is also worth mentioning that, several times I wrote to them regarding this issue. However, interestingly, they insisted on not sending the correct document. Since I thought that the officers of such a companiversity must be professionals, I believed in them and did what they told. However, I was simply insulted, obviously and deliberately, at the British Embassy, Ankara as a Turkish Citizen. You can find the details of the abnormal words and attitude of  the entry clearance officer in the following link:

(http://www.metu.edu.tr/~e116443/visa.htm)

Here is what the British Embassy says:

It is clearly noted in the letter you provided from The University   of Nottingham, dated 24th January 2006 that, “If you are an    international student, once we have received your original    supporting documents we will issue an unconditional offer letter   to assist you to obtain a student visa...”. At no point has this    further letter been produced. Nor has any other evidence of your   funding for the course of study.

Once having found such a chance hand, the entry clearance officer did not want to lose the opportunity of humiliating me, which is a behaviour especially supported with a tough motivation by their managers. Since she was also completely aware of this "perfectly operating education system in the UK", she acted as if she were very surprised and as if she did not believe that I was offered a studentship with scholarship. This is exactly what she says:

"It cannot be true. You do not tell the truth. Why should they pay your tuition fees? It is an overseas studentship, and overseas scholarship is not possible in UK. You do not tell the truth. Why should they pay your fees? Even as a UK citizen, they would not pay mine. Why should they pay yours?"

This is the well known visa policy of the United Kingdom in overseas countries, especially in Middle East and China. 

http://www.infozee.com/forums/forum-5.html

Even if they issue the visa, they humiliate the visa applicants during the visa interview by a tough “interrogation”. Thus, they leave to them an implicit message before they can enter to the UK, as in the case above. "Why should they pay your tuition fees? Instead of earning £12000 more, why should they pay your tuition fees?"

In Turkish, there is a nice idiom that illustrates this reality:

“Being disgraced with your own money”

These students from Middle East and China pay thousands of pounds every year to such companiversities and make them rich. However, despite this fact, they are again humiliated at the British Embassies by entry clearance officers. That is, “they are disgraced with their own money”. But, the companiversities do not care whether their prospective students are humiliated or not. They do not agree with this visa policy only because it causes them to lose their potential customers:

Universities UK says overseas students are now a "major export industry". "It is worth more than food and drink, tobacco, insurance, ships and aircraft," says Drummond Bone, president of Universities UK.

However, "The Companiversity of Nottingham" has already found a good solution to this problem: like McDonalds, it opens new branches in the areas that have a big density of potential customers. Thus, those students who cannot obtain their visa will be able to start their studies in their own home country. China Campus, Malaysia Campus

 However, there may also be students who insist to start their studies in the UK, despite all that deliberate insult and humiliation. In order to solve their visa problems, such companiversities have good teams composed of professionals. Dr. Sanja Petrovic summarizes this fact as below:

"There is a body within the university which provides such a  service to students, including supporting visa applications. They do their job rather successfully having in mind the large numbers of students from abroad that study at our University."

However, interestingly, I was not able to see "this professional approach" in my case. In order to receive this professional service, should I be one of those students making you earn thousands of pounds? If you have large numbers of students from abroad, you must already know what kind of documents a student will need in order to apply for a visa. That is, I even do not have to explicitly mention what kind of a document I would need. On the contrary, there need to be a standard practice of your university. I simply know this from some of my friends. They were admitted to some of universities from Europe and America, and they did not experienced such problems, and thus, they did not need to send tons of e-mails to obtain the correct one.

When I ask the reason of her indifference about the situation, I get the following statements from Sanja Petrovic, the "academic" who made this studentship offer to me:

!!!    "I have to notice that I am not used to being told by a student how to do my job. You may be surprised to hear that my job is not to

        provide administrative support for the future students."

!!!    "I did not find necessary to check every step in your application process."

!!!    "I think that I spent a large amount of time in the correspondence with you."

!!!    "I do not need to assure you that many students would be delighted to have such an opportunity."

!!!    "I was keeping the place for you on my project since October. I lost four months on the project."

These are, for sure, not the kind of reply that I expect from an academic, even if she is working at the University of Nottingham. I am sorry if I cannot act as prgamatically as Sanja Petrovic and the University of Nottingham. I can also understand that Sanja Petrovic does not want to hear from a student how to do her job. However, I am still not sure whether should I remind Sanja Petrovic or not of the existence of some ethical aspects that distinguish an academic from a trader.

I made a complaint to the University of Nottingham, regarding all the details mentioned above, and claimed an official apology letter. Not surprisingly, Caryl Thompson, the Head of the Admissions Office says:

"Having investigated your case thoroughly, I regret that I am unable to uphold your complaint.  It is my view that the University handled your application efficiently and appropriately.  The fact that you failed to obtain a visa in order to take up your place at the University, which forms the basis of your complaint, was not the responsibility of the University."

So, who is the responsible? Since, it is completely clear that I am not the responsible, does "the Companiversity of Nottingham" have the courage to explicitly say that it is the British Embassy who was the guilty?   

Since I got such a flippant reply from "the Companiversity of Nottingham",  I share my complaint directly with the public in my personal webpage.

Now, let's see the response of Alan Hart, the Academic Secretary of the University of Nottingham, which does not necessitate any further comment on the mentality of the University(??) of Nottingham:

"I do not understand why you feel that you have any complaint against the University of Nottingham, when we offered you both an unconditional place on a PhD programme, and a full scholarship worth over £20,000 per year."

And Alan Hart, the academic secretary, also threatens in order to make me remove this web page (the article you are currently reading) from my personal website. 

THE END!

By the way, I also advice you to visit the following link by clicking on the image below (taken from the website of Nottingham Student Peace Movement):

And to those, who want to study at the University of Nottingham, here is a vacancy announcement given by Sanja Petrovic months ago, which is still vacant. However, I advise you to be careful!!!

Project Description

This research project addresses two important issues:
treating various types of uncertainty that exist in
scheduling problems using fuzzy-logic based techniques and
considering multiple criteria which describe various
performance measures of schedules. New fuzzy multicriteria
rescheduling methods will be developed to be used as
response to various disruptions that can occur in a
manufacturing environment such as machine breakdowns,
delays in the arrival of materials, arrival of rush orders,
changes in orders, etc.
This project presents an ambitious multi-disciplinary
programme of research, which will attempt to draw together
the three research themes (scheduling/rescheduling, fuzzy
reasoning, multicriteria decision making) with a specific
aim of successfully tackling difficult, uncertain and
dynamic real-world scheduling problems. It comprises both
theoretical analysis and practical software
implementation.
The research will be carried out under the supervision of
Dr Sanja Petrovic. 

Industrial Collaborator

The industrial collaborator on the project is a printing
company Sherwood Press, which will bring to the research
all the challenges that solving real-world problems can
impose.

Research Group 

The Automated Scheduling, Optimisation and Planning
Research group (ASAP) is one of four major groupings within
the School. The School obtained a grade 5 in the 2001
Research Assessment exercise. ASAP is concerned with
investigating and developing Artificial Intelligence and
Operational Research approaches to a vide variety of
scheduling and optimisation problems. It has been at the
forefront of research in this area over the last few years
and is internationally recognised for its research work.
The group comprises 9 members of academic staff, 15 Post
Doctoral Research Associates, 47 PhD students and 3
secretaries. Further details are available on the WWW at: 
http://www.asap.cs.nott.ac.uk/

PhD Studentship

The studentship provides a living allowance at the standard
EPSRC rate (£12000 per annum) and tuition fees. Applicants
must hold, or expect to obtain a good honours degree (or
equivalent) in Computer Science or a related discipline.
Please ensure your CV includes your degree subject together
with the classification achieved or expected, and your
English language qualifications with the score obtained, if
applicable. In addition to your CV, you will also be
required to complete a University application form. This
can be downloaded from the WWW at:
https://pgapps.nottingham.ac.uk/.